"How nice that sounds! The enchanted garden! I wish I were coming there too."
"Why do you wish it?"
"I don't know. One cannot always trace the birth and growth of one's desires." Regina gazed at him as he stood there, one hand on the banister rail, thinking how truly wonderful he was in his difference from all the other men she had ever seen. The crowded country church on Sundays, what a mass of more or less ungainly, shambling, shuffling figures it contained, representatives of the middle-aged or old inhabitants; and the young men seen on the cricket and football ground, how fat and round and stodgy they looked, or else how thin and weedy, leaning over, as it were, the hollow of their own chests!
But here in Everest's case how all was changed! It was difficult to say whether the strength or grace of his figure left the greater impression on the eye, so perfectly were the two united in it. It was a form beautifully planned out by Nature, which the ceaseless activity of its owner had enhanced. It suggested potential energy; the balance and the poise of it, whether in action or repose, were always perfect. It had that curious symmetry, that look of its perfect adaptability to every possible movement, that one sees in the wild animal while at the height of its beauty and power. To Regina's mind came, as she looked at him, the thought of the slim and graceful fox, treading deftly with its sure, trim feet the edge of the covert, with all that tremendous power of swift, enduring speed locked in its beautiful, sinuous body. And again the red deer of Exmoor occurred to her, with their splendid carriage, their proud beauty of line, their clean-cut elegance of form.
Everest was forty-six, but so lightly had the feet of the years touched him in their flight over him that he looked hardly more than twenty-eight or twenty-nine. His hair had not a single white strand in it, nor had the dark moustache that flowed in a straight line across his face, not pulled downwards nor twisted up, and of which some of the threads glowed with a red-gold sheen on their blackness, if the sun struck across them. Very few lines marked the clear, warm tan of the skin; the teeth were even, perfect, untouched by dentistry. Life and experience had added power and intellect to the face, had deepened the mental charm without, as yet, taking from its physical beauty. Out of the beautiful youth he had been at eighteen, Nature had built up through all these years one of her masterpieces, and it seemed that she was so pleased with it, now that it had reached its perfection, that even she, fidget though she is, always doing and undoing, was loath to begin her task of pulling it all to pieces.
Regina gazed and gazed upon him in silence that was thrilled through and through with joy, for to the artist there is no delight more keen than looking on what is beautiful and perfect, and Everest asked her with a little smile of what she was thinking.
"Of an Exmoor deer that I saw standing, once, on a little tor at sunrise, surveying the sleeping moor," she said slowly and in a low tone, and then went on up the stairs, as she heard doors shutting, and steps approaching from below.
Everest passed on down. The beautiful imagery of her words won his quick, artistic sense, and, little conceited as he was, the flattery from the fresh, girlish lips pleased him. He went on, feeling well able to grapple even with the model cottages and the sick poor.
Regina in her room could do nothing; she tried to read, but she only heard his voice speaking; she turned to the paintings, but she hardly saw them: his face hung before her. Finally she descended to the drawing-room and sought to play, but her hands dropped from the keyboard, and she sat silent, gazing before her.